Girl of Iron and Magic

15.

15.
PRESENT DAY

Lotte was not happy with theft. She had thoughtlessly done it as a child but now that she was older, she knew the kind of turmoil simple people felt. A stolen motorcar would truly be a strike to whoever owned it.

This was about survival—but didn't make Lotte feel any better about it.

Rowan looked like she knew what she was doing all too well when she opened the car door using a metal wire clothes hanger she found by the bins in the courtyard. She went straight to the steering wheel and began rummaging with something underneath it. A moment later, the car's motor was humming and they were inside it.

Rowan had already picked the padlock that held the iron gates shut, she had done everything in under ten minutes.

They were on their way, cruising through the city traffic.

"Why were those people trying to kill you anyway?" Maloru asked.

Rowan scrunched her lips into a bud. "You know, no matter what I tried, they always ended up coming after me. I'm sure I tried to correct that timeline about two hundred times. I don't know, of course, I can just feel it."

"Yeah, but why...?"

Rowan shrugged her shoulders. "It's my reputation. It's the way I lived my life. Sooner or later it was bound to catch up with me." She shot Lotte an odd look before looking back at her driving. "No matter how good I get at changing the present, some things will just have to happen one way or another."

"Lotte says you're a diviner even though she thought they weren't real," Maloru said.

Lotte smiled, she was getting better at talking through her brain.

"Right," Rowan said. "This isn't a good time to be a diviner. My brother always warned me that if I didn't slow down, people would begin noticing."

"Slow down doing what?"

Rowan tapped her fingers over the driver's wheel. "I've been enjoying life a little too much. You get a taste for extravagance if you eat it too often. I developed a bit of an...eh.... Addiction. To gambling." She took a sharp turn that brought them out of their current traffic jam and into a maze of side streets. "Except, in my case, it was more of an addiction to winning."

They returned to the main street, now at the front of the light before the bridge that would take them right towards the Raimil highway.

So, people began to notice, Lotte thought and Maloru translated.

"I got too greedy," Rowan said, raising up her shoulders. "I think it's high time for a change, you know?"

What was she going to do now? Lotte wondered.

"I've been thinking about it for a while," Rowan said. "I haven't seen my brother in years. I think he's in even deeper trouble than I am. I need to find him and slap some sense into him."

"Do you know where to start looking?" Maloru asked.

"Yep." Rowan's smile looked a little bitter. "It's going to be a lot more trouble than it's worth and I'm not even sure how I'll get there."

"Where?"

Rowan sighed, and Lotte had a distinct feeling she knew what she was about to say.

"Serades."

Maloru jumped, nearly knocking his head against the car roof. Rowan didn't seem to notice how tense they both became.

"You know," she said as she slid into the traffic on the bridge. "It's my brother you have to thank for that sketch pad. He's a full-blown psychic. He can actually see connections between people, where they'll meet, where they'll end, how strong they will be. He can see the whole story. He said that someday..." Rowan looked at Lotte. "Someday you'll be important in my life."